BBC Focus magazine is a science technology magazine with a trained eye on the future. Includes scientific breakthroughs and gadgets that could shape the future of the human race, on earth or in space.
A narcotics cop is shot dead. A bar owner's wife and partner are gunned down in a robbery. A young women dies of a heroin overdose. All seem unconnected. But these deaths are set to trigger a convergence of corruption, cops, and the mob that could tear the Philadelphia police department apart.
Thora peered at the floor, but couldn't see anything that could have frightened Markus that much, only three mounds of dust. She moved the light of her torch over them. It took her some time to realize what she was seeing-- and then it was all she could do not to let the torch slip from her hand. 'Good God,' she said. She ran the light over the three faces, one after another. Sunken cheeks, empty eye-sockets, gaping mouths; they reminded her of photographs of mummies she'd once seen in National Geographic. 'Who are these people?'
Reading Colin Watson's Flaxborough mysteries will make you feel as if you had lived in the town all your life. You'll see the Flaxborough citizenry through the eyes and in the mind of inspector Purbright not as a panoptikum of criminal suspects but as your neighbors. Watson puts peoples actions, motives and feelings into such a perspective that along with the pure reading entertainment, one could use it as a textbook for Psychology 101 class, yet you will laugh out loud on every other page.
Carl Hiaasen's characters ride and flail on little verbal hurricanes, and his literary storm shows no signs of dying down. Sick Puppy shares Dave Barry's giddy gift for finding humour in South Florida horrors, and a bit of Elmore Leonard's genius for pitch-perfect dialogue spouted smartly by criminals who are as dumb as stumps. The title of Hiaasen's eighth novel could apply to most of its characters, but it chiefly refers to an ebullient Labrador retriever named Boodle and the millionaire eco-terrorist Twilly Spree.
